I Agree with Michael Freund

It is time for Israel to stop looking the other way whenever the Palestinians assail everything we hold dear. If it is a war of symbols they want, then Israel should not hesitate to respond. A good place to start would be to tear down the Orient House in Jerusalem, raze the site, and close it once and for all.

Similarly, the Muslim Wakf must be held accountable for the damage that it causes to the Temple Mount, site of the ancient Jewish temple. If the Wakf is unwilling to cooperate, their authority can and should be taken away.

We simply can not afford to allow the Palestinians to continue to spit in our faces, and then call it rain.

Our foes understand well the importance of symbols. They realize that despite their name, symbols are not merely symbolic, but have substantive value too.

The question is, when will we?

Source

I'm Now In Jerusalem and It Is Snowing

From my office window -



Mishkenot Sha'ananim and beyond



Old City Wall towards jaffa Gate

The Second Lebanon War Campaign Ribbon

Found here at the bottom of Yosifon's post.

And Who Said This?

'I have a problem with Islamic tradition, culture, ideology. Not with Muslim people.'...'Islam is something we can't afford any more in _________. I want the fascist Koran banned. We need to stop the Islamisation of ___________. That means no more mosques, no more Islamic schools, no more imams... Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims.'

Meir Kahane?

Aryeh Eldad?

Effir Eitam?

Me?

Naw.

Geert Wilders.

Who?

Here.

Another Point for Debating Olmert

Ehud Olmert disdains and opposes any "Jewish" interference in his handling of the talks with the PA over Jerusalem.

Here's a quotation from the document that was delivered to the Versdailles Peace Conference on February 3, 1919:-

"Palestine is not large enough to contain more than a proportion of the Jews of the world and the greater part of the fourteen millions or more scattered through all countries must remain in their present localities, and it will doubtless be one of the cares of the Peace Conference to ensure for them, wherever they have been oppressed, as for all peoples equal rights and humane conditions. A Jewish National Home in Palestine will, however, be of high value to them also. Its influence will permeate the Jewries of the world, it will inspire these millions, hitherto often despairing, with a new hope it will hold out before their eyes a higher standard; it will help to make them even more useful citizens in the lands in which they dwell. [too bad they were too late for the Holocaust]...

...To participate in the development and administration of immigration, close land settlement, credit facilities, public works, services and enterprises, and every other form of activity conducive to the development of the country...

To acquire and hold real estate.

The Jewish Council shall hold all of its properly and income in trust for the benefit of the Jewish people.

"

Ehud, did you read that?

"In trust".

Shiloh School Closed...in North Dakota

don't forget the third Monday in February.

It's just around the corner. Judging by the schedules around town, the date doesn't appear to have flown under the radar.

This weekend will be a nice long one for most government employees. Bismarck and Mandan city offices will be closed Monday. So will Burleigh's and Morton's. Likewise, the schools in Bismarck and Mandan. Ditto, Shiloh and St. Mary's.

State offices will be closed and there won't be any mail delivery Monday.

Source.

My Translation of a Yesha Council Editorial

Here.

Holy Hole!

Holy Har Habayit!

Please see update below

Haaretz [has] (sorry had) this picture up, taken by a member of the Islamic Movement:-

let's try that source again.

and it writes there that:

The National Infrastructures Ministry said in a statement following Friday's 5.3-magnitude earthquake that the most recent tremors have increased fears about the possibility of a destructive earthquake taking place here.

Friday's earthquake shook open a large hole on the Temple Mount plaza, near the Dome of the Rock.

Al-Aqsa mosque officials belonging to the Islamic Movement's Northern Branch covered the hole with wooden planks following afternoon prayers. The officials, who also said the quake caused cracks in several local residential buildings, said the hole was a meter deep, two meters long and meter and a half wide.

The Islamic Movement blamed Israel for the hole, saying Israel is digging tunnels in the area that undermine the stability in the area of the Al-Aqsa mosque. The organization urged Islamic states to take action to stop Israeli excavations in the area.

I don't think any Israeli should take credit for this, well, not yet anyway.

UPDATE

Picture from today's Ma'ariv:-



another via the El Aqsa Society




And here's a scene from 1927 in Jerusalem:-



And for the academic, here.

====================

Read my prescient monograph on the Temple Mount as a flashpoint.

====================

UPDATE

For all those who are getting upset about the religious aspect of the hole, whether or not it proves the existence of a God or that the Jews are the rightful owners of the site or whatever, let's get back into proportion.

The site, besides being a sacred spot and highly politically charged, is an archeologically important location with great cultural weight, at the very least. Why should the Muslim Waqf be allowed, with impunity, to destroy, eradicate, cover up and then deny its existence as where the two temples of the Jews were built? Even atheists should be sympathetic.

Better Traumatized Than to Traumatize

Amazing.

President Nicolas Sarkozy dropped an intellectual bombshell this week, surprising the nation and touching off waves of protest with his revision of the school curriculum: beginning next fall, he said, every fifth grader will have to learn the life story of one of the 11,000 French children killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

“Nothing is more moving, for a child, than the story of a child his own age, who has the same games, the same joys and the same hopes as he, but who, in the dawn of the 1940s, had the bad fortune to be defined as a Jew,” Mr. Sarkozy said at the end of a dinner speech to France’s Jewish community on Wednesday night. He added that every French child should be “entrusted with the memory of a French child-victim of the Holocaust.”

Adding to the national fracas over the announcement, Mr. Sarkozy wrapped his plan in the cloak of religion, placing blame for the wars and violence of the last century on an “absence of God” and calling the Nazi belief in a hierarchy of races “radically incompatible with Judeo-Christian monotheism.”

Education Minister Xavier Darcos explained later that the aim of the plan was to “create an identification between a child of today and one of the same age who was deported and gassed.”

The Holocaust is already taught in French schools, but some psychiatrists and educators predicted that requiring students to identify with a specific victim would traumatize them.

Really?

Well-

Pascal Bruckner, the philosopher[, said] “But this last one is truly obscene, the very opposite of spirituality. Let’s judge it for what it is: a crazy proposal of the president, not the word of the Gospel.”

The initiative has also pitted some Jews against one another. “It is unimaginable, unbearable, tragic and above all, unjust,” Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and honorary president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust, told the Web site of the magazine L’Express. “You cannot inflict this on little ones of 10 years old! You cannot ask a child to identify with a dead child. The weight of this memory is much too heavy to bear.” Ms. Veil was in the audience when Mr. Sarkozy spoke, and said that when she heard his words, “My blood turned to ice.”

I don't think so.

I think most children read children's books and children's books have stories in them that, weel, according to French philosphers, could traumatize. Like "Huckleberry Finn" where in the book, for example, "all of the remaining Grangerford males are shot and killed, and upon seeing Buck's corpse, Huck is too devastated to write about everything that happened."

Now, Where Else Did They Burn Books?

Gunmen have attacked the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Gaza City and blown up its library, burning thousands of books, its director says.
Eissa Saba said 14 men overpowered the centre's two security guards before placing bombs in the library and main office. The latter did not explode.

Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, is home to 3,500 Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox. Some have spoken of intimidation, but correspondents say Hamas itself has not shown hostility towards Christians since it threw its Fatah party rivals out of the coastal territory in June.

But what was the headline?

Yep, "militants":-

Militants bomb Gaza YMCA library

Goold old BBC.

An Example of Nonviolent Direct Action

We can learn from this.

Banda sisters

Under a scorching summer sun, a swarm of 400 furious women engulfed the scruffy electricity office of Banda district in north India. They were all dressed identically in fluorescent pink saris. For more than a fortnight they and their families had had no electricity, plunged into darkness at dusk and stewed in sweat at dawn. But they had all been sent bills demanding payment for power they had never received.

It was at noon one day last May that the group, brandishing sticks, first surrounded and then charged into the office, punching the air and shouting slogans of solidarity. They wanted to confront the officer in charge but met instead his cowering juniors, at whom they bawled to telephone the boss. When the man refused to come to the office, the women became incensed. They snatched the office key, roughed up the terrified staff and, after herding them outside, locked the door and ran away, vowing to return the key only when they had electricity again.

Products of this cruel environment, the hundreds of pink-clad women knew that their electricity supply had been disconnected by corrupt officials to extract bribes from them to get the power switched back on. With no functioning law to fall back on, they knew also that the only way to get a power supply was to take matters into their own hands. Within an hour of their absconding with the key, the electricity was restored.

It is just one victory in a list of successes achieved by the Gulabi Gang since it formed two years ago. Gulabi means pink, and refers to the electric shade of the uniform worn by the 500-plus members, who hail from Banda's arid villages. The women have become folk heroes, winning public support for a series of Robin Hood-style operations. Their most daring exploit was to hijack trucks laden with food meant for the poor that was being taken to be sold for profit at the market by corrupt officials.

And You Thought Egged Bus Drivers Are Bad

Police say the driver of a bus filled with about 40 former prison inmates abandoned the vehicle Thursday along a highway because her working hours for the day were over...They were aboard a Greyhound charter headed to a bus terminal in Dallas, but wound up 60 miles short.

"In 31 years in law enforcement I've never seen anything like this," Corsicana Police Sgt. Lamoin Lawhon told the Corsicana Daily Sun.

Police said the bus was chartered from Greyhound Bus Lines Inc. The driver pulled over in front of a convenience store around 4 p.m. and told the passengers her allotted driving time was up and another driver was on the way. A clerk in the convenience store called police. Officers arrived to find the former prisoners milling around the bus.

Police said dispatchers exchanged several phone calls with Greyhound officials and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Austin.

Lawhon and two other officers stayed with the bus and the parolees. Just before 7 p.m., a second bus arrived with three drivers - including the one who had abandoned her passengers in the first place, Lawhon said.

Remember Finkelstein? Norman, That Is

Here's his latest (unless he was "misquoted"):-

The controversial author and political scientist Norman Finkelstein, who was recently embroiled in an ill-fated struggle to be granted tenure at De Paul University in Chicago due to his criticisms of "Israeli" policy, kicked off a tour of Lebanon on Friday with a news conference at Ta-Marbouta Cafe in Hamra.

...On Saturday, Finkelstein plans to conduct a workshop at the Center for Palestinian Youth in the Palestinian refugee camp of Chatila in Beirut at 1 p.m. Later in the day, he will deliver a lecture entitled "Memoirs of an anti-Zionist" at 6 p.m. at the Babel Theater in Hamra. Both lectures will be presented in English and again in Arabic.

Sunday will see Finkelstein travel to the southern town of Qana to hold a public meeting with the title of "Why Pro-Resistance Lebanese Were Right to Give Human Rights Watch the Boot," at 3 p.m.

...In a statement read at the news conference, Finkelstein noted that since his previous visit, "three brutal wars" have been fought in the region at the behest of the US, namely the invasion of Iraq, the 2006 "Israeli" war against Lebanon and the increased stranglehold by the Jewish (Zionist) state on the Palestinian economy and lands following the 2006 electoral victory by Hamas.
On the invasion of Iraq by US-led forces, Finkelstein said that the architects of the war were not members of the US-based "Israeli" lobby, as some outspoken academics have asserted, but US Vice President Richard Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

...Regarding "'Israel's' [note the quotation marks the paper inserted - YM] brutal war of aggression" on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the Jewish author disputed the notion that actions by Hizbullah were to blame for the onset of hostilities. Finkelstein said that "Israel" had long been planning the war, which claimed the lives of 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 160 "Israelis", mostly soldiers. The US, he claimed, signed off on the invasion with the hope that it would destroy Hizbullah, thus facilitating a US strike on Iran. While Finkelstein said that there is never a victor in war, he added: "However, it is also true to say that the Lebanese resistance inflicted a historic and well-deserved military defeat on the invading foreign army and its chief supporter."

Did You Miss Nasrallah's Speech?

The recorded one because the real brave leader wouldn't show at the memorial rally.

Well, check out the official Hizbollah site.

Strength vs. "Strength"

Oz, like in Amos Oz, in Hebrew means 'strength'.

Lt. Major (Res.) Oded Torah has shown strength in taking on Amos Oz.

In an advert in Haaretz on February 14, he attacked Amos Oz and Friends:-

The gist is that Oz and his fellow "intellectuals", the writers and the thinkers, should simply shut up as they aren't strategists.

"What's your authority," Tirah asks, "to advise the people of Israel on these matters such as entering Gaza in a ground operation? Are you professionals?"

He claims they display simplicity and professional shallowness. This, instead of improving national values such as solidarity and mutual responsibility. Where are they, he writes, when the state is breaking its social contract with the citizens to be defended and protected.

He finishes:

Dear Amos Oz: Your words are returning us to the Galut

and are weakening our stance.

Keep quiet!

"Shiloh" Provides for Some Weird News Stories

Here.

Shiloh, Illinois again.

Be the Academic

I read this and it reminded of something in the Talmud:-
Beyond Peeping, Suspect Caught Under Bed

GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) – "I was in bed laying with my girl (and) I heard something rumbling underneath my bed. I thought it was my dog." What Jeremy Lynn heard was not a dog, but from a peeping tom who had broken in hoping to see his girlfriend naked. "(When) I looked underneath there, I saw these eyes staring back at me. I was like 'what the crap! This ain't normal,'" said Lynn. "So I start(ed) slinging him around. I was upper cutting him, beating him left and right."

Police said after they arrested Donei Zabedra-Ilario, 20, he confessed to spying on eight other houses in Greensboro.

And if we go the Talmud, Tractate Berakhot, 62A we read:-

R. Kahana once went in and hid under Rab's bed. He heard him chatting [with his wife] and joking and doing what he required. He said to him: One would think that Abba's mouth had never sipped the dish before! He said to him: Kahana, are you here? Go out, because it is rude. He replied: It is a matter of Torah, and I require to learn.

Madonna Needs More Kabbalah

A review in the daily Die Tageszeitung of her new, first film is less forgiving:

"Madonna is super. Her music, her shows, her story, her yoga, her kabbalah and her husband -- it's all super. She just can't do movies. She can't act, and now we know that she can't direct either ... Every plotline in the film is meaningless, and all the actors are rather bad."

Peace by Piece

As for the report’s implications, and the analyses of its effect on the prime minister’s status, the data reveal a small majority saying Ehud Olmert cannot continue to serve in his position. A majority also believes the current government as a whole should not continue to serve, with most favoring new elections. Only a small minority wants the present government to continue serving but under a different leader.

Those are the main findings of the Peace Index survey that was carried out from Monday to Wednesday, 4- 6 February

Tefillin? It's Dishes Now

When I was much younger, the code word was "tefillin date".

Now, it's dishes, I infer:-

In New York City, Yoshie Fruchter and his girlfriend, Leah Koenig, still wrestle with their dietary differences after almost two years together. He is kosher and she is vegetarian. They eat vegetarian meals at her apartment, where he keeps his own set of dishes and utensils. When eating out they mostly go to kosher restaurants, although they “aren’t known for inspired cuisine,” said Ms. Koenig, 25, who works for a nonprofit environmental group.

Though the couple occasionally visit nonkosher restaurants, Mr. Fruchter, 26, a musician, said he has to order carefully to avoid violating kosher rules. “We’re still figuring out how this is going to work,” he said. “We’re both making sacrifices, which is what you do when you’re in love.”